1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is that of printers, peripheral printers of central processing units and printers integrated with printing apparatuses such as facsimile machines.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Two main types of printer are known: printers using laser printing and printers using thermal printing. The field of the invention is that of the latter printers. Printers using thermal printing, provided with a head of resistive heating elements use either thermal paper in roll form or ordinary paper in sheets as the printing medium.
The field of the invention is, even more particularly, that of printers using thermal printing employing sheets of ordinary paper that is to say printers using thermal-transfer printing. The printing is carried out under the action of the printing head, by transfer of a thermally meltable ink, previously laid on a support film, the whole forming a printing ribbon. The invention relates to these printing inking ribbons which consequently have a width at least equal to that of the sheets intended to be printed.
Fitting these ribbons in a printer involves a handling operation requiring many precautions if it is desired not to waste length while ensuring correct tension of the ribbons.
The present invention aims to dispense with such a handling operation.